High-voltage lines and health

All electric current generates electric and magnetic fields. The electric field is proportional to the voltage and magnetic field is proportional to the current. That is clearly understood, the voltage is similar to the amount of water in a tank and the current is the force that down the pipe. In the alternating current of our homes, the direction of the stream changes 60 times for each second.

Electric fields can be shielded or isolated, for example with insulating coating of cables, While the magnetic field is much more difficult and expensive to isolate and in many cases it is virtually impossible. Buried underground power lines generate magnetic fields weaker than those generated by cables that are in the open air. This occurs by design and not because the Earth eliminates the field. In any case, the best way to reduce the magnetic field is increasing the distance separating us from energy supplies, including the electric pots.

Studies in humans have shown that electric and magnetic fields found in the homes and offices are not intense enough to cause health damage. But it remains an open question whether permanent and continuous exposure to weak fields is harmful to people, There is not enough evidence to confirm this. However, studies of laboratory animals and cell cultures have shown that weak fields can have effects on different biological processes, for example they can alter the hormones and enzymes levels and the pace of the movement of some chemicals in living tissue.

By themselves these changes doesn't seem to be a health hazard, but it is not known if in the long term they may be cause of an increase in the incidence of cancer or other adverse life. Only in some studies carried out in Europe, United States, Japan and Australia, the effects of these fields have caused an impact on the growth of cancer in laboratory animals.

Some of these studies have reported that children who have lived close to transmission lines of high current and distribution lines, they have higher incidences of cancer. The same, other studies have come to the conclusion that adults exposed to lines of Haute tension have experienced one higher incidence of the disease, than those which have not been crags that kind of radiation.

Other studies have come to the conclusion that no compelling results, but the level of uncertainty is high. Finally other studies show that there is no apparent cause of association that deny or confirm the possibility of harm to health.

In the case of pregnant women, tentative studies have resulted that the possibilities of risky pregnancies are higher which boasted it. Take precautionary measures, for example not using an electric blanket for sleep, but warming up the bed with the blanket before one lying down and off to go to bed. Can also move the bed of a wall close to a power source and watching the TV or computer monitor where less each 50 cm distance.

Despite the fact that the studies are not conclusive, international health agencies recommend avoiding magnetic fields, especially those caused by high voltage lines, substations, Air transformers and power transmission and distribution lines. Citizens are in full right to require that the high-voltage lines and transformers are away from their homes. In our country, where are the transmission and distribution lines usually installed outdoors and in many cases close to housing, they constitute an attack on health, the Government has an obligation to correct and citizens have the right to demand that it should be corrected.

In the Decade of the 80, in United States, several States took measures in this respect and there were many instances of lawsuits against the companies of electricity by air facilities nearby homes. The Economist magazine published a study of the University of Colorado showing a picture of 344 children who died of cancer after living near power lines against a sample of control of others 344 healthy children who never suffered this disease. In that decade in Florida where the demands were many, the federal Government of that State was one of the first to regulate this type of facilities. A pathetic case was the one which occurred in an American city where all children attending a park where it was installed a substation outdoor, They ill cancer to the brain.

In Lima, examples of these high-voltage lines that cross the city are those found in the Av. The Navy, between the Av. I escardó and up to the height of the craft market on the block 7, from where the line goes underground. Examples of distribution lines are seen in almost all the streets of Lima where as cobwebs of two species of Arachnids, electricity undertakings and telephones, They disfigure the city and threaten the health of citizens. It is not the fault of the current municipal authorities that high voltage line come from the Faucett Avenue crossing Maranga, because that was the fault of those who were in the municipality of Lima at the time that projected bliss Avenue and urbanization. What is the duty of the municipality of Lima, It is to give her term to electricity companies to begin to bury the lines, as befits a city of the century 21